Life Is Not A Fairytale
by BeshterAngelus
Summary: Life for Dana Scully is far from a fairytale.  A series of stories based off 100 Fairytale prompts on LiveJournal.
1. The Fox As Shepherd

Character: Dana Scully  
Fandom: The X-files  
Rating: PG-13

Word Count: 231  
Prompt: 001-The fox as shepherd for **100_fairytales**

The stars shown in his darkly intense hazel eyes, turned upwards to the fathomless black above. He couldn't really believe what he was saying, could he, about white lights and alien ships? This was all madness, a trick of the moonlight in the Oregon woods, the brightness of Sheriff Miles' flashlight, nothing more.

"I saw it, Scully," Fox Mulder insisted, awe mingling with delight as his gaze scanned the heavens. "That boy, Billy Miles, was taken somewhere, just for an instant."

"Mulder you saw a flash of light, nothing more." Dana Scully had seen nothing. She had been caught in the woods, waylaid already by the angry sheriff, and forced to try and track down her partner in the darkness.

"But you saw it," Mulder replied, with the insistence of the believer.

"I saw something." She would neither confirm nor deny it. "It could be anything, Mulder, what makes you so sure it was an alien ship?"

"I'm not...but I'm open to believing it was one." He finally cast down his eyes towards hers. "I want to believe it."

"I can't," she gasped, feeling suddenly foolish with herself that she couldn't just buy into these things as easily as he could. He made it sound so easy.

"Than trust me," he replied simply, holding out his hand.


	2. Curing the Sick Lion

Character: Dana Scully  
Fandom: The X-files  
Rating: PG-13  
Word Count: 200  
Prompt: 001-Curing a Sick Lion for **100_fairytales**

"How much longer?" Mulder's in his petulance whined like a sick child, fretful and feverish as he glared mutinously at Scully's firm resolve.

"Mulder, you were found nearly dead on an ice field infected by a contagion of unknown origin. In short, you won't be let out of here till your fever drops and your white blood cell count returns to normal." Which, judging by the last set of blood work she had run, wouldn't be till the end of the week.

"But I'm bored!" The lament rang to the heavens in disgruntlement as he glowered at the television playing its endless run of SportsCenter.

"Then I'll send a pretty nurse over to you to cheer you up."

Mulder perked up slightly at that. "Really?"

"The blonde one who said you were cute," she might as well feed his ego; it would keep him placid for a little while.

"Cute?" Mulder glanced surreptitiously towards the hall. "So she said I was cute?"

"You are so easy, Mulder," Scully sighed with an indulgent smile, pulling the sheets up further around him. "Get some rest."


	3. The Saving Blood

Character: Dana Scully  
Fandom: The X-files  
Rating: PG-13  
Word Count: 309  
Prompt: 003-The Saving Blood for **100_fairytales**

"You are going to go through with this against the board's wishes?" Father Ybarra's baleful eyes just barely masked how he felt about that under a thin veil of civility. Scully barely bothered the same for the priest.

"Father, I don't recall ever needing the boards approval to treat my patient." Her voice was civil but she saw him flinch at the ice as she busied herself with the paperwork on her desk. "Christian Fearon's parents have agreed to the treatment. And great promise has been shown in the stem cell treatment for his condition."

"You know that we as a hospital follow the tenants of our faith as Christians in terms of alternative treatment."

"I also know that we as Christians can not stand by and allow a young boy to suffer, degenerate, and die if there is something we can do about it," she snapped, cutting across the sheepish looking man.

"Sometimes we must let God's will be done in these things, Dr. Scully, as a doctor I thought you of all people would know that."

"If you wish to explain that to that boy yourself, be my guest." Scully coldly stared down the priest, gathering her paperwork, wanting to be anywhere else but talking to this man at the moment. "So what are you more bothered by, Father, the fact that I'm using the chord blood of live births to save a young boy, or the fact that I'm countermanding your personal belief on the welfare of Christian Fearon?"

He reared back, face hardening. "Dr. Scully, I have already filled a complaint with the board."

"Good, let me know when I'm up for my execution." She pushed her way past the man, daring him to say something in response.


	4. The First To See The Sunrise

Character: Dana Scully  
Fandom: The X-files  
Rating: PG-13  
Word Count: 340  
Prompt: 004-The First to See the Sunrise for **100_fairytales**

She awoke to golden fingers streaking across a pearl gray sky over a canopy of trees so still for a long moment she forgot she was sitting out in the real woods. In her lap Mulder stirred, moaning briefly in his sleep, but falling back under, exhaustion and his wound dragging him back again. Scully envied him for a moment. She had snagged precious few hours as it was, sitting in the darkness of the Georgia wilderness, not knowing what was possibly out there that could snag either one of them. She'd kept vigil over her injured partner until her own weariness took over.

They were supposed to have been going to a team building conference, they were supposed to be eating stupid appetizers and getting mildly intoxicated while pretending they had anything in common with any of the other partners present at this event. Mulder was supposed to shoot his mouth off about some alien theory, Scully was supposed to somehow cover for him, they would have a mild disagreement, realize that everyone else was stupid, and go home. This was what the weekend was supposed to be about.

Instead she was in the middle of nowhere, watching the sky lighten from pearl gray to white as around her the silence stretched so taught one false move and it would shatter around them like glass. Scully found herself holding her breath, waiting, watching as the world around her slowly woke up to another day. Was this how the world was like for everyone else? Was this what life was life away from alarm clocks and the morning news, without coffee pots and drive through breakfast sandwiches?

She could grow to like this, she thought, this peace and serenity. It was nice being, breathing, just simply existing.

Mulder shifted in her lap, pressing against her very full bladder, and all thoughts of a pleasant, Thoreau like existence silenced for now.


	5. Learning To Fear Men

Character: Dana Scully  
Fandom: The X-files  
Rating: PG-13  
Word Count: 340  
Prompt: 005-Learning to Fear Men for **100_fairytales**

His voice was a gravel whisper against her neck breath curling the hair and brushing her skin. "You're hair is so beautiful and so natural." Blunt, calloused fingers raked through it, rubbing it between knuckles, a low, guttural murmuring of pleasure rumbling low in his throat, like a purring tiger at her shoulder. Scully closed her eyes against the desire to wretch, biting hard against the gag of spit-sodden cotton in her mouth, locking her jaws against the whimper that rose, unbidden.

"You are such a lovely woman, Agent Scully." Donnie Pfaster's melodious tone was genial, calming, the sort you'd expect of the person behind you in the stylist chair, chatting over a hair color or a fresh cut. She could hear the deadly edge; however, keen as a razor blade as he reached down to inspect her bound fingers.

"This is good work for fake nails." He spoke with a wealth of expertise and admiration. "I suppose you need to keep them fake for your work, natural would break so easily. You're a meticulous woman, Agent Scully, you take good care of yourself." Pfaster smiled in approval, running fingers up the fine veins of her wrist where the rope bound and cut the soft skin. "I appreciate a woman who can keep up appearances."

He pulled her roughly against him, hard against his chest, like an oversized rag doll, squeezing so hard her ribs cracked. Her heart tattooed madly in her ears but she refused to yell, refused to buck, she wouldn't provoke him into further action. She needed to buy time.

"Dana knew the minute I saw you in that jail I had to have you. I've never seen a woman like you before."

She would not scream, she would not scream, she would not scream…


	6. What Was Whispered In His Ear

Character: Dana Scully  
Fandom: The X-files  
Rating: PG-13  
Word Count: 309  
Prompt: 006-What was whispered in his ear for **100_fairytales**

"She killed your partner, Fox. Shot her dead there at your feet, don't you see her lying in a pool of her own blood, her brains splattered across the pavement?" Linda Bowman painted a grotesque picture so real that Scully could see Mulder stare at it in heartbroken horror, despair and anger fusing into murderous rage. He stood fluidly, gun in hand, spinning on Scully in fury, his aim centered right at her.

Scully knew in that moment he would shoot her in his righteous vengeance, his best friend, his partner, the person he trusted most. He would fire and he would kill her, and she would really lie as dead on the cold, oily concrete as he already imagined her to be. And only then would he see the truth, that he, not Linda Bowman, was responsible for Scully's murder.

Linda Bowman watched her faced lined with concentration as she murmured behind him, but triumph glittered in her blue eyes. The smallest of smiles appeared as her soft voice continued to murmur just over Mulder's shoulder, just how her brother Robert Modell used to do. She was playing him now, like a violin, plucking at the most sensitive of Mulder's heartstrings, twisting it with her words, pushing into his mind, making him see things that weren't there. She thought she was winning, thought she had Mulder where she wanted him. But Linda Bowman didn't know Fox Mulder the way Dana Scully did. And Scully wasn't going to let this happen.

Scully directed her own aim right at Linda Bowman, meeting the other woman's surprise with cold resolve. Let Bowman think what she wished. One of them was going to die today, and it wasn't going to be Scully.


	7. Blood Brothers

Character: Dana Scully  
Fandom: The X-files  
Rating: PG-13  
Word Count: 401  
Prompt: 007-Blood Brothers for **100_fairytales**

It was the eyes that were a dead giveaway. Scully hadn't dared look him full in the face before. She had been afraid to see what was behind the wasted, melted visage, to look into those eyes and see the brilliance and sadness of Fox Mulder. Afraid to see her worst fears confirmed. But now she had no such qualms. She gave herself the luxury of studying the creature on the other side of the two-way glass, hunched and grotesque over the small table, meeting her gaze fully as if knowing she was standing there, studying him. Perhaps he did, perhaps he knew she had discovered the truth.

She should have known. She shouldn't have been afraid to see what lay plainly on the twisted man's face.

"Dana, the DNA doesn't lie." It was Monica Reyes waiving science in her face for once, Monica who always went with gut intuition. "The DNA says its Mulder."

"The eyes," she murmured, not turning away from the piercing, dark pain in the flattened, ruined features. "This man's eyes are brown, dark brown. Mulder's eyes are hazel green." She used to be able to have whole conversations looking into those eyes. She could read Mulder's mood, his humor, his pain written as clear as day in the smallest of gazes. Why hadn't she trusted herself?

"Are you saying the PCR test is wrong?"

"No," Scully drawled out, reaching blindly for the file folder in Monica's limp fingers. "I'm saying the PCR test is right, that is Mulder's DNA, but it isn't Mulder. The PCR test looks for genetic fingerprints, things marking a specific DNA line. For men they often go through the male line of decent, the Y chromosome, because it is distinguished from that of the female."

"If that isn't Mulder but he shares his DNA…"

"That means that this man shares genetic markers with Mulder's Y chromosome line of decent." Her gut instinct had told her from the beginning this wasn't Mulder. Now she had her beloved science to back her up. "And I now know who he is."

"Who?"''

"His name is Jeffrey Spender," Scully murmured through the glass, watching the man in the mirror with equal parts loathing and pity, wondering not for the first time what the monsters had done to him. "He's Mulder's half-brother."


	8. Sin and Grace

Character: Dana Scully  
Fandom: The X-files  
Rating: PG-13  
Word Count: 406  
Prompt: 008-Sin and Grace for **100_fairytales**

Even after his admittance into Our Lady of Sorrows, Father Joe stank of cheap cigarettes and rancid grease, his lank, frazzled gray hair limp against his rough cheeks. Scully stood at his bedside, watching the defrocked priest fall deeper into his medicated sleep, wanting to shake him, wanting to hate him.

"I didn't know you were suddenly championing the causes of cancer patients now, Dr. Scully." Father Ybarra slipped beside her, his quiet, voice whisper soft and accusing over her shoulder.

"I'm not." She wasn't going to explain why it was she was looking in on a disgraced man, accused of stealing the innocence from young boys like Christian Faeron…like her own lost son.

"They said you were the one who called him in." The chief of surgery wasn't going to let this go, at least not with her. "A strange place for you to be, Doctor, at the side of a man disgraced."

"Maybe." She wasn't sure what the priest beside her was implying. "I went there to ask him a question…to understand."

"Understand?" The word rolled off Ybarra's tongue as if he couldn't possibly see what the likes of Father Joe could have any insight into.

"The nature of sin." Scully stared at the aging man, so still in the bed in front of her, feeling the weight of her own many sins pulling at her, weighing her down to the point she wanted to collapse. "Father Ybarra…do you believe that a man who has sinned so fully could ever speak the word of God?"

They had never discussed theology the two of them, not beyond the acknowledgement that she was a Catholic and thus fit to work at Our Lady of Sorrows. Her words caught him off guard, and he paused, thoughtful and surprised. "We as mankind are born to sin, Doctor Scully. And while some of us bear that weight more fully than others, God has been known to work through even the most disgraced of people to bring about his glory."

"But how can we trust that anything they say is the truth?" There was the rub, the nature of her dilemma. Practical, skeptical Dana Scully, always questioning the nature of truth. Mulder had no problem believing this man's words, but she did. She always did. "How can I know that God has chosen this man to speak to me?"

Ybarra's beady eyes flickered to the still man in the bed and back down to his pediatric neurosurgeon, understanding and perhaps a hint of compassion glittering briefly. "It is hard to understand the nature of sin and grace, Doctor Scully. Sin is the legacy of all of us, but grace that is truly the work of the divine. And who are we to judge whom God bestows his grace upon. It is a gift from our Father, he bestows it upon who he pleases."

"Even a man who has done great evil?"

"There is reason even for that, Dr. Scully. And perhaps by bestowing it on someone we judge unworthy he is trying to show us all a lesson." Father Ybarra's pained smiled was mysterious and knowing all at once, the sort of beatific look only priests and saints ever seemed to manage. "Listen to your heart, Dr. Scully. Even if common sense or stuffy hospital administrators tell you otherwise."


	9. The Danced Out Shoes

Character: Dana Scully  
Fandom: The X-files  
Rating: PG-13  
Word Count: 254  
Prompt: 009-The danced-out shoes for **100_fairytales**

Leather cut into her pinky toes, the arches of her feet ached from too long in high heels, but she didn't want to sit down. The air was spangled with the scintillating reflections of the disco ball ahead, and around them were whispered words of Elvis and magic, and of romance in Memphis. And still she swayed along, held tightly in Mulder's arms.

"If I wake up from this, Mulder, and this was all a dream, I'm kicking Izzy Berkowitz's ass."

"Somehow I don't think this is a pesticide induced reality," Mulder chuckled, perhaps pulling her slightly closer than was strictly necessary. Scully wasn't about to complain, even if her heart fluttered in a way unbecoming of a professional, FBI agent, and if skin flushed a tad more than she preferred for her cool, collected exterior.

Her feet would hurt later, and she would look back on this and wonder what in the world she was thinking, agreeing to a crazy adventure like this. And in the morning she would limp a little and grouse about the expense, and the time taken, and how this was all a horrible breach of protocol. But for now she spun lazily, her cheek against the rough fabric of her partner's jacket where she leaned into his shoulder, feeling the soft rhythm of his heartbeat and the scent of his aftershave, imagining wandering Beale Street in a gentle pouring rain.


	10. The Princess In The Shroud

Character: Dana Scully  
Fandom: The X-files  
Rating: PG-13  
Word Count: 186

Prompt: 010-The Princess in the Shroud for **100_fairytales**

She wasn't alone.

It was cold here, wherever she was, and she wasn't alone. She could feel the other presence somewhere inside of her, curled deep and dark. It was invasive, alien, foreign, frightening to think of, coursing through her veins. What it was she didn't know. How did she get here? Where was she?

Her world shattered.

Everything was on fire, the presence flying from her, screaming from her as she choked and gurgled against whatever it was in her throat, down in her esophagus, cutting off the air. It was freezing and cold, and the world was white and blurry, and she trapped.

Trapped…

Panic rose, she wanted to scream but couldn't, as the wall in front of her cracked and splintered. Her prison opened into biting air and a roar of sound and the frantic glow of Mulder's terrified eyes. Quick, desperate fingers reached for whatever was choking her, pulling it out as she struggled to breath.

"I'm here, I've got you Scully, I'm here…."


	11. The Girl as Helper in the Hero's Fight

Character: Dana Scully  
Fandom: The X-files  
Rating: PG-13  
Word Count: 186  
Prompt: 011-The girl as helper in the hero's fight. **100_fairytales**

His eyes danced behind his reading glasses. Was he laughing at her or taunting her?

"So you're going to permanently stick it out with me down here in the basement?" He crossed his arms across his ugly tie, dark eyebrows dubious.

"I think it will be interesting, Agent Mulder. I look forward to a long, productive partnership." She tried to at least look more confident than she felt.

"Right," he stopped just short of smirking. "You do realize, Agent Scully, most people around this joint thing I'm a crackpot."

"I can't say I agree with them."

"You just stood in the pouring rain in Oregon and called me 'crazy' as I recall."

Damn it all, there was that. "I'm here to work, Agent Mulder, and to perhaps use my skills as a scientist to further your work."

"Is that what they are calling it these days, 'furthering my work'?" His chuckle is dry and sarcastic. "All right, Scully, if you insist. Tag along if you must, but I won't cut any slack for you just because your text books tell you that what you see in front of your face is impossible."

She wasn't asking for slack and he knew it. "Good, and I hope you don't mind when I call you out on your wilder theories."

"Do what you got to do, Scully." His shrug was diffident as he returned to his slides. "For what its worth, welcome on board."


	12. The Youth Transformed

Character: Dana Scully  
Fandom: The X-files  
Rating: PG-13  
Word Count: 193  
Prompt: 012-The youth transformed for **100_fairytales**

Scully was almost sorry Jeffrey Spender...almost.

She had been like him once herself. So certain in how she saw the world, in how the world operated. There were no such things as aliens or conspiracies to hide them, no abductees, no tests. All of the fantastic suggestions of Fox Mulder were merely that, fantasies born out of one man's desperate need to believe in something.

Scully knew better than that now. And so did Spender.

She watched the tall, young man walk out of Kersh's office, head high, not looking back at them. How much it had cost him to say those words to the Assistant Director. It would mean the end of his role on the X-files for certain, and perhaps the end of his career. Certainly it meant he would no longer have the favored place he once did with the Bureau higher ups. He had just thrown away everything because of the truth he saw…the truth he also now knew.

She knew from personal experience, it wasn't easy turning from skeptic to believer.


	13. The Magician and the Pupil

Character: Dana Scully  
Fandom: The X-files  
Rating: PG-13  
Word Count:  
Prompt: 013-The magician and the pupil for **100_fairytales**

"How are you doing it?"

Smoke wreaths his head, and for a moment it hits the light like a halo, a holy aura around his silvered hair. "Agent Scully, do you assume I have done all of this for nefarious means?"

She paused, eyes narrowing at his sad righteousness. "You've lied, stolen, killed, ruined more lives than I even want to think about. And you tell me you've all done it for some noble cause?"

"Isn't that what Mulder tells you every time you wake in the hospital with him at your side?"

She closes her mouth with a snap, her teeth jarring hard enough to ache. His smile is slow and far from beatific. "I simply want to show you what good our work has done in the world, Dana. Are you afraid of knowing the truth?"

The words were the same, and yet the meaning so different. "I don't know if you know what the truth is."

"Suit yourself, Agent Scully. I had hoped you would be more open-minded than your partner." He shrugs, his smoke curling around him, filling the room with charred tobacco. "Perhaps I was wrong about you."

Her reply feels cold on her tongue. "Perhaps." But she wasn't so sure he wasn't right after all.


	14. The Youth Who Wanted To Learn Fear

Character: Dana Scully  
Fandom: The X-files  
Rating: PG-13  
Word Count: 455  
Prompt: 014-The youth who wanted to learn what fear is for **100_fairytales**

At this moment if Scully could get away with it she would never take a shower in her bathroom ever again. Her favorite room in the entire house, the one that held her deep, claw hammered bathtub, with its cool, cream and green tile, and its softly, fluffy towels, it had been her center of relaxation, her place of Zen. But now it held a handcuffed, pissed off, completely demented killer who had just five minutes before had been attempting to extract Scully's liver with his bare hands. Hatred and hunger glittered in Eugene Tooms dark eyes, thick lips pulled back across his straight white teeth. If she closed her eyes she could almost imagine blood and gore staining those perfect teeth, dribbling down his leering chin.

"Police are on their way, Scully." Mulder's fingers crawled across her shoulder, her skin jumping under his unexpected touch, eyes widening and flying to his, filled with still frightened concern. Her new partner had crashed into her apartment, guns blazing practically, frantic…over her.

"Thanks," she breathed, shivering as Tooms growled, low and feral, pulling like a wild animal against the fixtures of her tub. Her tub, her home…invaded...it was frightening, terrifying…

"Is this common for a field agent with the FBI, having psychotics, liver eating serial killers breaking into their apartments?"

"Only the really lucky ones," Mulder grimaced darkly, gently steering her out of her bathroom. "Though I think mostly only the newbs, didn't they tell you that in the Academy. The ritual hazing into field work includes one attempt on your life by a serial killer plus running across the National Mall in your underwear."

Impossibly he managed to illicit a snort out of her, despite the adrenaline coursing through her veins. "I think I could do without the serial killer bit."

"Does that mean you're still game for the underwear part then, because if you have something black and lacy…."

"Fat chance," the nervous giggle that erupted from her seemed absurd given the current circumstances. "Though I might start locking my underwear drawer if people insisted on breaking and entering."

"And take all the fun out of snooping around your apartment for me?"

In the distance the sirens sounded, wailing into the Georgetown night. The clanking of chain against pipe in her bathroom became even more frantic.

"Thank goodness the cavalry is here." Mulder's smile softened the anxiousness as blue and red lights flooded her window. "Don't worry, Scully, I'm sure after this the crazies will lay off your home for a while."

"Let's hope so," she murmured, wrapping her arms around herself.


	15. Little Brother and Little Sister

Character: Dana Scully  
Fandom: The X-files  
Rating: PG-13  
Word Count: 340  
Prompt: 015-Little brother and little sister for **100_fairytales**

Scratches marred the color photograph, cutting into its glossy surface, shattered glass leaving deep scars across the chest of the boy and the face of the girl. Red blood, none of it theirs, stained the edges of the paper, leaving sticky, brown stains that coagulated and curled, warping the thick, heavy paper like sodden tears.

"Whose blood is it?" Scully's voice was thick and rough from the treatments, weak from her days in the hospital, dying. Thankfully she was dying no longer.

"I'm assuming it's his." Mulder was indifferent at best. He sounded as if he'd run through an emotional gauntlet, and he had. His face was shadowed with growth and grief, his bruised, hazel eyes avoiding her own. "They said it looked as if someone was sacrificing virgins, which knowing that monster he just might have been." His flippant sarcasm was out of place given his mood.

"They don't think he survived whatever happened to him. His body wasn't there though. If he was killed professionally, they likely took him with him."

"But what was with the photograph?" She held it in her fragile hands, frail as bird's wings, dry fingertips balancing it carefully for study. How young the boy who would be her partner was, how exuberant the girl that was his long-missing sister.

"I don't know." It was an agonized answer, one that carried with it a wealth of questions about Mulder's own past. "But it was found where they believe his body fell."

Scully thought she could smell the scent of Morleys, long embedded into the paper. Why did the cigarette smoking man have this photo? What was his relationship to the Mulder children? Why did he care?

"I think we've had enough miracles of late, Dana," Mulder murmured, slipping the photograph from out of her fingers. "Let's not ask any more questions for a while."


	16. Sleeping Beauty

Character: Dana Scully  
Fandom: The X-files  
Rating: PG-13  
Word Count: 224

Prompt: 016-Sleeping Beauty for **100_fairytales**

"You know you'll have to wake up soon."

"Not if I ignore the alarm clock." Scully slurred against her pillow, uncaring there was patch of drool on the crisp linen, or that her hair currently looked as if she'd lost some horrible battle with a wind tunnel.

"Do you know how cute you are in the morning." Mulder was begging for bodily harm as his long fingers stroked up the soft skin of her arm.

"You've forgotten I was an FBI agent once, I can hurt you."

"You've forgotten I was too." He hardly seemed petrified. She cracked one sleep-swollen eye up at her far too cheerful partner.

"You know, I hate you, right?"

"That's why I brought you coffee." He waived a mug above her head, fragrant liquid filling her nostrils with roasted heaven. It was enough to rouse her face off of the pillow.

"I might have to keep you around if you do things like that."

He chuckled as he shifted on the mattress, allowing her to sit up and grave the warm mug out of his hands. "You never know, I might actually start cooking and picking up my socks one of these days too."

"I'm not asking for miracles, Mulder, just coffee in bed."


	17. Friends in Life and Death

Character: Dana Scully  
Fandom: The X-files  
Rating: PG-13  
Word Count: 273  
Prompt: 017-Friends in Life and Death for **100_fairytales**

"What did you see in your dreams?"

Mulder's swollen eyes barely cracked open under the thick swaddling of gauze, but a smile played on his pale lips.

"I dreamt of another life. One more simple than this." His hazel green eyes flickered around the hospital room and to Scully's anxiously thoughtful face. "I saw myself married, with a family, the happy suburban life. Samantha was there."

"Fox Mulder, settling down." Did he really want that, she wondered softly. He had never once mentioned it. Settling down for Mulder seemed to be something other people did.

"It was nice," he sighed tiredly, sleep edging his words, you were there."

"Was I?" She was almost afraid to ask, not sure she wanted to know the answer of why she was there or for what purpose.

"Yep…you were there, kicking my ass as usual. I wanted to give up…to die. I thought I had lost everything. I was a failed man. But there you were, telling me to get up, to fight. I wanted to die before that."

"And now?" Her eyes misted as her voice thickened, but she refused to cry in front of him.

"You kept me going, you gave me a reason to not give up." He chuckled, a low thrumming in his chest. "I was dying, but you saved me, just by being what you've always been…my friend."

She didn't have words for him then, just a touch of fingers and a gentle smile as he finally allowed himself to drift quietly to sleep.


	18. The Bridge To The Other World

Character: Dana Scully  
Fandom: The X-files  
Rating: PG-13  
Word Count: 548  
Prompt: 018-The Bridge to the Other World for **100_fairytales**

Melissa was forever making something to drink. Tea, coffee, a glass of water, Scully always wondered if her older sister used the simple effort of hospitality as a way to calm nerves, much as their mother offered people food at a dinner party. The mug her sister set in front of her was filled to the brim with coffee, deep and rich, with just the right amount of sugar, just the right amount of cream. Scully lifted it warm to her lips and drank deeply. It tasted of early mornings with her father before he would leave for the Navy base, of forty-eight hour days with no sleep while being on call in her residency, of late night stake-outs with Mulder, her head drifting sleepily to his shoulder as he cracked one sunflower seed after the other.

"It's perfect, Missy," she sighed happily. "All of this is perfect, you, this kitchen, the coffee…"

"You know why that is, right?" Melissa's dark, auburn eyebrow quirked up slowly in a perfect imitation of her own, mischievous knowing sparkling deeply in her eyes.

The realization was there but Scully hadn't wanted to think about it, not yet, now when things were still so pleasant. She swallowed past the lump resting in her throat, the coffee suddenly not tasting as sweet. "I'm dead?"

"No," Melissa replied in a measured tone, settling at the worn table, her long fingers tracing patters on the well-scrubbed wood. "Not yet. But you are in a place of decision."

"I get to decide if I want to die?" Scully snorted, laughing at her sister's words, reaching to pluck restlessly at the cross at her throat. "So it isn't how the priests said, we aren't carried off by angels up to heaven?"

"Well that part might be true, I don't know. But that isn't the part we are at. You aren't dead yet, Dana." 

"Just mostly dead?"

"Not even that." Melissa chuckled, appraising her younger sister for long moments. "You have a choice, you know. Even now the cancer in your body is wearing it down to breaking. But I know you, Dana, and I know you can't leave anything unfinished behind."

"Weren't you the one who always said death was a natural part of life, that it should just be accepted?"

"I did," Melissa nodded, both of them recalling another time not so long ago when Scully had nearly died like this. "But I also know that there are truths still out there that need to be found, Dana. Not just about how I died, but about others…and he can't do this by himself."

Scully didn't need to ask who "he" was. "He did it without me before."

"I saw him when you came back, Dana. He can't do this without you." Scully didn't need her sister's admonishment to know she was right.

"But I'm tired, Missy," she sighed, hands wrapping around the mug on the table. "Very tired."

"I know, Dana. There will be time for us, for all of us. But now is not your time."

"It never seems to be my time, does it Missy?" Scully sipped at her coffee and thought of Clyde Bruckman and Chantilly lace.


	19. The Confession

Character: Dana Scully  
Fandom: The X-files  
Rating: PG-13  
Word Count: 479  
Prompt: 019-The Confession for **100_fairytales**

The wood of the confessional was nearly black with incense and candle smoke, hand polished to a soft shine as she stepped up to it. Scully's fingers fumbled for the knob in the semi-darkness of the church, taking comfort in the anonymity of the sacrament of penance and reconciliation. She had much penance to make, much to be forgiven for.

Scully closed the old, creaking door behind her, knowing it would be a signal to the priest on the other side she was there. Dim light just did filter in enough for her to open the space between herself and her confessor, her mind spinning for the formula of her youth. "Bless me Father, for I have sinned. It's been two years since my last confession."

She paused, wondering if there was anyone on the other side of the grated screen. But she could hear soft breathing, a murmured noise of encouragement, urging her to continue. "My family and my faith taught me to trust in God in all things, that everything happens for his reason, beyond mere mortal understanding. I've tried to hold on to that belief, but…" Tears rimmed her vision suddenly, clogging her throat as she tried to swallow, tried to speak.

"In the last year, Father, I've had so many things test that faith. My health was failing, my work was being questioned and undermined, and just recently…" She stopped, sniffing, pulling out a tissue as a tear managed to find its way meandering down the side of her nose. "Recently father, I discovered I couldn't have children, only to find out that due to some...mix up, my ova had been used to create a child for another couple. That child was sickly, and she died." She didn't want to have to explain the details of Emily's existence.

"I'm by far not the only person to experience tragedy in this world, father, but I'm so…angry with God now. How could he let this happen, to me, to those I love? Why? And for what purpose, I've done nothing to deserve it except try to be the best person I can. I just don't understand. I've resented God for it…hated him for it. Hated that he's allowed all these things to happen without even an reason as to why."

Scully felt the torrent of words inside of her ebb. She slowed to a stop, the tissue little more than shreds in her fingers. "I've hated God, Father. Hated him and not cared that I did."

It was the worst of sins the loss of faith. Only in penance and reconciliation could she hope to find relief, to somehow find her way back again, to seek out and grasp that thread of faith and belief. How had she lost it so completely?


	20. All Stick Together

Character: Dana Scully  
Fandom: The X-files  
Rating: PG-13  
Word Count: 291  
Prompt: 020-All Stick Together for **100_fairytales**

"All we have to do is stick together." Mulder sounded as if he was trying to convince himself of this as much as Scully beside him as they meandered to Skinner's office.

"Stick together," she tried to nod firmly, but it came out more as a terrified squeak. "Mulder, we haven't even come up with a logical explanation on why it is you staked that kid."

"Do we need a logical explanation, it's me we are talking about."

He did have a point. "Somehow I think your propensity for over the top behavior isn't going to get us far when we have a dead teenager and a several million dollar lawsuit against the FBI on our hands."

"Then what do you want me to say," he stopped in the hallway, near frantic as he shot desperate glances towards Skinner's office door. Scully's mind twisted frantically as she tried to think of something, anything that they might have a hope in hell of using to get out of this mess.

"We could tell him you had a temporary, psychotic break from reality?"

Did that really sound as stupid coming out as she thought it did?

"Temporary? Scully half this place thinks I checked out on reality a long time ago, nothing temporary about it." He threw up his hands in despair, running them in agitation through his dark hair. "That's it, I'm fired, you're fired, the FBI is out millions, and I'll be lucky if I'm not brought up on manslaughter charges."

"We could always say you were drugged," she offered weakly, trailing behind him as he stormed off to his doom in their boss' office.a


	21. Beloved of Women

Character: Dana Scully  
Fandom: The X-files  
Rating: PG-13  
Word Count: 245  
Prompt: 021-Beloved of Women for **100_fairytales**

_Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed are you among women…_

Scully had murmured that prayer her entire life, the petition she had heard whispered off her mother's lips every time her father left for sea. Hail Mary, most beloved of women, the virgin mother of the miracle child, Christ.

"Dana, this is a blessing." Her mother sounded so sure of it, holding her hand, beaming with the thought that her barren daughter would produce a child. "You thought this would never happen."

She had never thought…but she had hoped once. "Why?" It was the fearful word burning into her heart, even as she felt the first stirrings of new life in her womb.

Maggie's frowned, dark eyebrows working together in worry over a question she couldn't bring herself to ask. "Do you have to ask that for a miracle?"

It was so simple for her mother. It was a matter of faith. But Scully's faith was never so simple, questions poured out of her, flooded out of her, carrying her away on a sea of terrified doubt. And her one anchor in the storm, the one who could always make her believe when even her reason could not was lost somewhere, so far away from her.

_Blessed is the fruit of your womb…_

There was no such thing as a simple miracle.


	22. The Dance Among Thorns

Character: Dana Scully  
Fandom: The X-files  
Rating: PG-13  
Word Count: 245  
Prompt: 022-The Dance Among Thorns for **100_fairytales**

Her skin tore, paper thin, scratching and itching as she ran through branches and past brambles. Someone called her name, Skinner maybe? Scully ignored him as the light lit up the skies in the compound she had just left behind. They couldn't take him, not Jeremiah Smith, she needed him now, she needed him to fix Mulder, to bring him back. He couldn't be dead…he just couldn't be.

Her windbreaker caught on another branch and she tugged, uncaring as vinyl yanked and split, her voice cracking into the wind. Her feet pounded against icy ground, hard as iron as she burst into the tiny shed, hoping against home she was wrong, that Smith was there.

All was emptiness inside. The light was gone, Smith was gone, as if he had never been there…as if he had never existed.

All hope was lost.

Her heart breaking, Scully felt her feet stumble. Her knees crack against hard wood as she finally crumpled. Tears stung against scraped cheeks as her raw cry carried off into the night, carried rustling mournfully through the naked, thorny trees.


	23. The Devil's Contract

Character: Dana Scully  
Fandom: The X-files  
Rating: PG-13  
Word Count:  
Prompt: 023-The Devil's Contract for **100_fairytales**

He said the phial in her hand held the key to her cure.

"Mulder, there is no cure for cancer." She had come to accept that about her fate. Why couldn't he?

"You contracted this cancer when you removed the chip from your skin, what is to say putting a new one in won't have the reverse effect?"

"You believe what this smoking man has to say?" She knew he did. Mulder was desperate enough to believe anything the devil had to offer. "What did you promise him for this?"

"Scully," he hedged, turning away, not wanting to face the recrimination from her.

"He's evil, Mulder, he will tell you anything to get you to do what he wants. This could all be a lie."

"And it could be the very thing that makes you better."

"What did you promise him, Mulder?" She feared she already knew. Mulder would stop at nothing to save her if he could, even if it put everything he had ever worked for at risk. The idea should comfort her. It didn't.

"None of that is important now, what is important is you getting better." He reached long fingers to her frail hand, forcing it around the cold metal tube. "Do this for me, Scully. I need to know we tried everything to save you."

"All right," she whispered to his express relief. Perhaps it would work. She tried to console herself, what was the harm in trying? She only prayed Mulder hadn't sold himself at too high a price for this. The truth was more important than her life.


	24. Open Sesame

Character: Dana Scully  
Fandom: The X-files  
Rating: PG-13  
Word Count: 300a  
Prompt: 024-Open Sesame for **100_fairytales**

The sign on the rental unit threatened "No Trespassers" in large, black letters. Not that it seemed to give Mulder pause as his flashlight glided over the reflective metal and onto the large, padlock on the rolling, metal door.

"I suppose the idea of a search warrant duly signed by a judge just completely left your reasoning, right?" Scully eyed the empty lot uneasily. At this time of night it was unlikely anyone would be there to observe Mulder's flagrant breaking and entering, but you could never tell what waited in the shadows. To prove the point she flickered her flashlight into one particularly worrisome corner, only to be greeted by the shriek and scurrying sounds of large, gray rats.

"A warrant takes time, Agent Scully, you know that, and we'd need probably cause." Mulder studied the padlock for long moments, reaching into his leather jacket and pulling out a heavy, vinyl wallet. "Besides, this is faster and easier."

"Not to mention illegal," she muttered as Mulder grinned wickedly. He placed his flashlight in between his teeth as he pulled out his lock picking tools, carefully placing the narrow pieces of metal into the padlock and jiggling quietly for several minutes. Mulder never mentioned where he had picked up this particular skill of his or why he knew it, and Scully had thought it better not to ask.

A click, a metallic think, and Mulder grunted in self-satisfied success. He slid the lock off the door, removed the flashlight from his mouth, and smiled proudly. "Open sesame, Scully, no federal judge required."

"I should be disturbed by your criminal behavior, Mulder, but you know what, I'm not." Scully more or less felt resigned to it.


End file.
